Headlines

Teachers threatening to stop repaying loans from the Government Savings Bank are risking bankruptcy and disqualification from government service, deputy justice permanent secretary Tawatchai Thaikyo warned on Tuesday. He was responding to the announcement by leaders of a network of professional teachers' organisations meeting in Maha Sarakham on Saturday that their 450,000 members would stop paying off debts to the state-owned bank next month in protest at increasing interest rates, the Bangkok Post reported. "Be prepared to become bankrupt if you owe more than 1 million baht...

Swiss battery manufacturer and energy storage company Leclanché has negotiated a debt restructuring with its shareholders and, in a press release issued this morning, warned further measures may be required to shore up its balance sheet, pv magazine reported. The 109-year company announced its major shareholder FEFAM – a coalition of four investment funds – has purchased an unspecified amount of debt that was due on June 30 and postponed its maturity date for two years, until March 31, 2020.

One China hedge fund is adding to stocks in the nation even as a rout deepened losses in its portfolio and prompted some peers to duck for cover, Bloomberg News reported. Springs China Opportunities Fund is using the “panic selloff” to increase its holdings of “oversold and undervalued” companies, it told investors in a letter seen by Bloomberg News. The letter was sent after the fund lost an estimated 17 percent this year through July 6. The Shanghai Composite Index has dropped as much as 12 percent since the end of May, as the trade spat with the U.S.

Europe still has to build up its war chest to keep failing banks from cratering the economy, Bloomberg News reported. Weeks after agreeing on steps to shore up the currency union, politicians received a reminder that the arsenal to handle banks in trouble remains incomplete without the power to provide hundreds of billions of euros in emergency cash. Elke Koenig, head of the euro area’s bank-failure agency, said that even a new arrangement that doubles the firepower of her institution’s crisis fund may not be enough to return a failed bank to the market.

China’s savers are rushing to pull money from peer-to-peer lending platforms, accelerating a contraction of the $195 billion industry and testing the government’s ability to maintain calm as it cracks down on risky shadow-banking activities, Bloomberg News reported. In some cases, savers are turning up at the offices of P2P operators to demand repayment, spooked by reports of defaults, sudden closures and frozen funds. At least 49 platforms have failed in the past two weeks, adding to 80 cases in June, the biggest monthly tally in two years, according to Shanghai-based Yingcan Group.

Cerberus Capital Management LP made a joint offer with Banca Ifis SpA to buy most of the 6 billion euros ($7 billion) of Italian bad loans being sold by Credit Agricole SA, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The pair submitted a bid for a package nominally valued at 4.3 billion euros, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the transaction isn’t public, Bloomberg News reported.

European Affairs Minister Paolo Savona proposed on Monday that Italy should boost investments by about 50 billion euros (£43.79 billion) and called on the EU to back the plan instead of insisting on deficit reduction, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. In an interview with daily La Verita, Savona said Italy should be allowed to spend the equivalent of this year's estimated current account surplus, around 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, on new investments to raise economic growth.

Even if he wins the battle for control of Ellaktor SA, Leonidas Bobolas plans to make way for new leadership at Greece’s biggest construction company, Bloomberg News reported. Bobolas hopes his move will help to end a bitter internal dispute over how to revive the firm that’s lost millions of euros in recent years and seen its share performance lag behind peers. Ellaktor’s chairman Anastasios Kallitsantsis quit last month to launch a campaign to replace top management, but Bobolas says the company had already hired consultants to reorganize its governance structure when that happened.

The UK’s biggest provider of apprenticeships is to change hands for the second time in less than a month after the man who purchased Learndirect on June 23 agreed to sell its apprenticeships arm for £1 to Staffline, the listed employment agency. The sale comes less than a month after Lloyds Development Capital, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group, sold the whole of the troubled Learndirect business to Stonebridge Group, a privately owned company controlled by Wayne Janse Van Rensburg, a South African-born entrepreneur, the Financial Times reported.

British department store retailer Debenhams said it had a healthy cash position after a media report on Sunday saying insurers had cut cover for its suppliers sent its shares lower, the Irish Times reported. Shares in Debenhams fell as much as 8 per cent on Monday on the back of a Sunday Times report that the retailer, which has issued three profit warnings this year, was facing a cash crunch after credit insurers reduced or refused cover for its suppliers.